Mobility lifetime product—A tool for correlating a-Si:H film properties and solar cell performances

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Abstract
The missing correlation between film characteristics and a‐Si:H‐based p‐i‐n solar cells is still a controversial subject. The authors present a new parameter μ0τ0, evaluated from steady‐state transport measurements on a‐Si:H layers, which can indeed relate film quality and cell performance as far as the latter is limited by the quality of the intrinsic 〈i〉 layer. Thereby, two specific features of the evaluated μ0τ0 product can explain its successful role as a quality parameter for a‐Si:H: First, the computation of μ0τ0 takes into account the effects of the prevailing dangling bond occupation, which is very different in uniform films as compared to the occupation profile prevailing through the i layer of a p‐i‐n solar cell; second, the evaluated μ0τ0 product combines information about band mobility and defect density; furthermore it avoids some of the well‐known pitfalls of usual deep defect density measurements such as constant photocurrent method and photothermal deflection spectroscopy. Experimental data on a series of layers and p‐i‐n solar cells illustrates the determination of μ0τ0 in a given practical case and its successful correlation with cell efficiency. In this context, an estimation for the ratio of charged to neutral capture cross sections σ±/σ0 of around 50 is found.